You're Not Just A Cornellian; You're a Plaintiff

Lawsuit alleges top colleges illegally collude to limit financial aid

Among the schools named in the suit are Yale, Georgetown, Northwestern, Columbia, Brown and Duke universities.

Also named are the California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Universities of Chicago, Notre Dame, and Pennsylvania, as well as Dartmouth College, and Cornell, Emory, Rice, and Vanderbilt universities.

I wish my memory were better but I thought there was litigation concerning this issue and a subsequent policy change sometime within the last 20 years. The policy of the Ivies cooperating so that the out of pocket expense for any student would be essentially the same regardless of which Ivy that individual opted to attend was changed years ago.

Before the change if Harvard's tuition were five thousand higher than Dartmouth's and a student were accepted to both then a calculation was made such that the aid at Dartmouth would be 5K less. The schools colluded to equalize the cost for the student. The theory was that when the student chose where to attend it would be based on criteria other than cost.

Is the current suit based on a different theory of harm to the student?

my issue with financial aid is that the expectation/goal for going to college is that i will come out of it with a job in my field of choice. if that is true then why should 3 levels of kids come out of it any different.. if you get into top school as a poor kid you often get pretty close to full rides and such come out with limited debt.. if you get in as a rich kid you pretty much come out with no debt and you get in as a middle class you are buried in debt..

NYT, Lawsuit Says 16 Elite Colleges Are Part of Price-Fixing Cartel
The suit claims that nine of the schools are not actually need blind because for many years, they have found ways to consider some applicants’ ability to pay.

The University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt, for example, have considered the financial needs of wait-listed applicants, the lawsuit says. Other schools, the lawsuit says, award “special treatment to the children of wealthy” donors, which, given the limited number of spots, hurts students needing financial aid.

The lawsuit claims that the actions of these nine schools — Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, M.I.T., Northwestern, Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt — render the actions of all 16 universities unlawful, turning it into what the suit calls “the 568 Cartel.”

In other words, Cornell and six others are in deep water for hanging around with the nine who're bad actors.

Guilty? Not guilty? The NY Times quotes Peter McDonough, VP / general counsel of the American Council on Education, who contends "the case was similar to antitrust litigation the Justice Department filed against Ivy League schools and M.I.T. in the 1990s" that led to a favorable federal appeals court for MIT ruling and the Justice Department settled its claims. He adds, “I’d be surprised to ultimately find that there’s fire where this smoke is being sent up today ... the defendant schools are “very antitrust aware and particularly sophisticated. They have good advice provided to them.” Says the lawyer for a group whose members include all 16 defendants here.

My recall is that the first time around, 1990s, the allegation was that the schools were price-fixing in that you couldn't shop around for a better deal among elite schools. The schools said it was for the good of the student, who didn't have to worry about getting a worse deal from one of the tight-fisted Ivies.

If you read all the way through the NYT story, 4 grafs from the end that you find the Times' formulaic "raises trouble questions about [whatever the Times finds unsavory]." In this case, the 16 are associated with taint of Varsity Blues and racial quotas:

NYT
The lawsuit is merely the latest legal action that raises questions about the admissions practices at elite universities and colleges — including the Operation Varsity Blues scandal, in which wealthy and well-connected donors were shown to have bought their children's admission to college, and claims that admissions at top-ranked universities are based on racial quotas.

The 2021 perp-walk schools are
Brown
California Institute of Technology
University of Chicago
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Emory
Georgetown
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Northwestern
Notre Dame
University of Pennsylvania
Rice
Vanderbilt
Yale
... but not Harvard or Princeton Harvard as the largest endowment of any university; Princeton has the most per student (about $2 million).